Latest iPad addiction

I grew up with a blank pad of paper and Crayola markers in my hands. Designing outfits, clothes, trying my best to recreate Nintendo game characters and sports team logos, and attempting to paint scenery consumed my summer breaks. When I got a bit older, I tried my hand at caricatures (which landed me in hot water when I sketched a couple of high school bullies who eventually found the actual pictures – whoops. I regret it to this day.) My hobby eventually led to a Junior and Senior year gig as the editorial cartoonist for our high school paper, which was published in the county-wide newspaper; this resulted in multiple trips to the Principal’s office, where I had to explain the artwork. I also took AP Art, played around with oil paints and various mediums I’d never used before in my life.

Unfortunately, when college came around, I neglected art for a short while and focused on course work. At times, I would squeeze in an art project here and there, but the constant doodling and creating took a backseat to Criminal Law and Sociology courses. When I finished school, I picked back up on my hobby again, drawing and designing various things for friends and investing in some new supplies every now and then. As things have increasingly turned electronic, I’ve had my nose stuck in an i-Something way more than in a pad of paper, and I have yet to be impressed with any of the child-friendly, relatively simple drawing apps on iPad – until now.

Finally, there’s a classy, “grown-up” drawing app for the iPad, and I haven’t skipped a day of using it for the past 4 weeks. The Paper53app is downloadable from iTunes for free and includes an “eraser” plus one default drawing tool. Optional add-on drawing tools are available for $1.99 per item, or you can download the whole toolkit for $7.99 (I downloaded all of them.) I created Dr. S’ new Facebook Timeline Cover photo this past weekend, which took only 30 minutes to complete. The app is responsive to fingertips, but I use a stylus pen (totally worth the few bucks’ investment.)

When using the Paper53 app, you can easily make any doodle look absolutely amazing. The tip of the brushes and pens aren’t blunt, so drawing and blending colors are a cinch. No need to have killer artistic skill – I’m convinced that Paper53 can make anyone’s work look like a beautiful piece of art. I’ve had a ton of fun playing around with the app, it’s a super effective stress-buster, and I can easily get back to my artsy fartsy ways (BONUS: artwork is easily sharable on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and via email with a couple taps – great for me, the apparent attention-seeking social media geek.)

Audrey – ive never used sketchbook pro; a bummer, but paper53 output isn’t high res- just the same quality/size as what you create, maybe a tad larger. This is one of the most frequent requests, so I’m betting the developers update the app with a high res feature

You only drew that picture in 30 minutes? That’s a great photo of the Albany skyline. You definitely should have pursued art in college, Stephanie! 🙂 Any chance we’ll see more of your Paper53 drawings on A Professor’s Wife in the future? You could always put it in the same post as Chalkboard Friday?

It stinks that the iPod touch has it; do you know if the Kindle Fire has this app? My sister loves art class and does a really good job drawing (I didn’t get artistic ability at all unfortunately). She has a Kindle Fire, and I’m sure she would absolutely LOVE this app.